Flying to Africa

It's been a little over 24 hours since I've arrived in Morocco and so many things have happened already that had exceeded way beyond my expectations!

First though, I need to tell you about my experience flying over to Morocco. 

My flight literary went like this: 6:05pm flight from Logan to Madrid, 9:00am flight (EU time) from Madrid to Paris, then 1:00pm flight (EU time) From Paris to Fez, Morocco.

Starting off in the wrong foot:

NEVER BOOK THROUGH ONETRAVEL.COM TRAVEL AGENCY!

In the beginning I ran into some minor problems... well, it would have been major problems actually if it weren't thankfully fixed right away. I got to Logan at around 2:30pm for my 6pm flight and went to check in my bags. When the check-in lady was checking for my ticket, she had told me to hold on one second because she had to check something. She was gone for a good 20minutes, and when she came back, she had told me that my travel agency, onetravel.com, which happened to be fraudulent, had cancelled my flight through their end; I had checked the day of to see if my flight was still booked and online it said it was. Thankfully, she said that this has happened before through their site and therefore, was able to fix my problem rather quickly. 

CHECK WITH BANK BEFORE GIVING OUT ANY CARD INFO!

Just when I thought I had everything under control, I received a phone call from an anonymous New York number saying that my debit card was deactivated and I needed to give them information in order to reactivate it. So I hung up right away to make sure that was correct and, again thankfully, I thought twice to call my bank before I started giving out such confidential information. When I called the bank and told them the situation, they told me that my debit card, according to their records, was fine and ready to be used. They told me that it was a good thing that I checked with them and thanked me for sharing such information. So I gave them that anonymous number so that they could check for any suspicious activity, and they said that that number may very possibly be fraudulent as well. 

...yes. That was how I started the first few minutes of my trip. 

LESSON LEARNED: GET TO THE AIRPORT AT LEAST 3 HOURS AHEAD OF TIME!

People I met traveling:

Gabby

The rest of the trip, fortunately, was smooth sailing from then on. I met a couple of great people that had helped me through the process. On my way from Logan to Madrid, coincidentally I ended up sitting next to a girl from Babson that is studying abroad in Spain as well. We were able to talk about our schools as well as what we were to expect while studying abroad that really got me thinking about what I really want to get out of this whole experience. She was also, very ironically, interested in the type of work that I want to do after I graduate. I am thinking about being a marketing major and with it, work with non-profits to help people that are in need to make a sustainable living for themselves. She and I got to talking about different types of companies out there and she really got in interested about the Grameen banks and what the founder, Muhammad Yunus, represents. I want to work in a field that really helps the small people be able to develop and prosper. It was such a pleasure to meet her. We even had lunch together afterwards in Paris before we went off on our separate flights! 

RIOT. That is the one word that can describe what it was like on the flight before it even took off from Paris to Fez. The flight was delayed over 2 hours because there were many handicapped people taking that flight, so the flight attendants and workers had to help them on one by one which caused such a delay. Because of this, people on the flight were not happy so they started to complain to the flight attendants and soon it grew and became a huge fight among the people on the flight! It was scary at first since I couldn't understand what they were saying! But thankfully, a man that was sitting right next to me named Mikhail explained to me the whole situation and kept talking to me about different things in Morocco to keep my mind off the chaos that was going on in the plane. 

Makhail

Makhail is a Moroccan who's family lives in the city of Meknes. He, however, lives in Paris where he works in a very fancy hotel. (I cant recall the name of the hotel.) He suggested places that I should go and things to eat, and even offered me to have dinner with his family once I get to Fez. I have yet to call him but I'm still debating whether it is safe to do so or not. But once we arrived in Fez, he helped me with my bags and exchanging of the money. I even got to meet his family which consisted of his father, his brother, and his 10 year old niece. They seemed very friendly. My ride which was coming from AUI (the school) was late, so he even helped me look for my driver and when we couldn't find him initially, he let me borrow his brother's phone. He was very helpful and I was so thankful to have met him. I am thinking about giving him a call tomorrow, just to thank him at the very least. 

Morocco .... is unbelievably and truly a beautiful place with such beautiful hearted people. (so far!)

OH! And I got to go into the cockpit of the plane that went from Paris to Fez! 
The pilot thought it was very strange and interesting that I chose to study abroad in Morocco when all the others want to leave the country and study in the states. So he invited me into the cockpit to meet his co-pilot and we talked about the cultural differences between Morocco and US (which I will get to in later posts), as well as about flying a plane. haha It was such an amazing experience.